Cindy knew instinctively that she was in more danger than she had ever been in her life. Her parents had no money to speak of, so the kidnapping had not been for ransom. Even if it had been, and the men had grabbed her by mistake (very unlikely), they would probably kill her when they discovered their error.

Cindy knew that the reason she had been grabbed off the street would almost certainly involve forced sex, or worse. Cindy did what she had done for much of her life and closed her mind to any eventualities over which she could have no possible control. Focus she told herself. I've got to make them want to keep me alive and healthy. That's something I can control. Maybe.

Although Cindy Caswell had more than a little experience defusing the ardor of predatory men, she suspected, correctly, that the man or men she would soon have to handle would be several orders of magnitude past anything she had experienced in Rolla, Missouri.

Looking nice and showing what those books say is 'inner strength' isn't going to be good enough she said to herself. Then she realized that was the only thing she really knew, so that was where she started.

The room had no mirror anywhere, but Cindy found that she could see her reflection in a convex section of the large glass stone of the ring on her free hand. She began to use the fake stone as a mirror. Well, that's a start.

Cindy looked at her image, used her hand to straighten her hair and wipe her eyes and nose with the sheets, checked the results, and repeated the process until she was satisfied. Then she set about straightening her blouse and smoothing her skirt. Finally, she pulled her underwear down, spat repeatedly onto the first three fingers of her left hand, and transferred as much of her own saliva as possible to the inside of her vagina.

By the time Eddie Viglisi came to fetch the captive for his boss, what he found was a very composed, calmlooking young woman of striking beauty with what actually looked like the hint of a smile on her face. If they want someone who's terrified and screams all the time, that won't be hard to switch to Cindy thought. If they think it's really a big adventure for me, maybe I'll stay alive for a while.

"C'mon, Princess. Your dream date's waiting for you," Viglisi said as he took out the ring with the handcuff key on it and released the metal restraint. Cindy nodded once in acceptance. She stood waiting beside the bed for Viglisi to show the way.

"I never did a thing," Boone Caswell whispered sullenly. "No reason for her to run off. No reason," he repeated, wanting it made clear that this was not his fault. Myra's eyes were an angry red from continued sobbing. The sheriff hung up the phone and walked over to where they were sitting. His face was red and he looked uncharacteristically ill at ease. He took a deep breath and let part of it out before speaking.

"The, ah...Chicago police. They're not willing to say any crime has been committed-least not yet," he added hastily. "Cindy's eighteen, and she's legally an adult. They got no, uh, evidence that anything bad's happened to her. Only that she's not where you 'd like her to be."

What the Chicago desk sergeant had actually said was 'Look, ace, if we tried to track down everyone who ever got a wild hair an' said adios to the hick town they grew up in, well, shit-we couldn't do it if we had twice the men an' didn't do nothin' else. And if the kid's eighteen, forget it. That's the kind of shit can get our asses slapped with a lawsuit right now. She may turn up of her own accord. I got the description an' your number. I'll check the Jane Does in the morgue every day or two for a couple weeks. That's the best I can do.'

"She didn't run away from home," Boone Caswell said with a conviction he did not feel. He was actually more concerned with taking the blame for his daughter's departure than he was with the fact of her disappearance. Myra Caswell continued to cry.

Much to the disappointment of his two hardboys, Sal Marino had not yet grown tired of Cindy Caswell. If anything, he was more interested in her than when Eddie had brought her to his room in the penthouse the previous afternoon.

She had been a virgin, which had surprised the mob boss. She had also been genuinely wet, and had exhibited a sort of shy enthusiasm, which had been a real shock. That was something he had occasionally gotten from the very best whores, but never from one of the young 'throwaways' he sent Tony out for when he was feeling especially tense.

Sal Marino was not feeling tense now. He sat on the couch with a champagne bottle in his right hand and his left hand between Cindy's legs. She was rhythmically squeezing the man's middle finger, using the Kegel technique.

Cindy did not know that was its proper name. She had read about in one of the skin magazines she had found that her father kept hidden in his closet. 'Hong Kong Fuck Muscles' was what the article had called them. Good thing I practiced those exercises, Cindy thought as she watched the mob bosses' erection start to grow. She took the champagne bottle from him, pulled back his robe, and poured a few ounces on his exposed groin. Then she set the bottle aside and bent over, taking him in her mouth.

"I'm going to have to keep you around for a while," Marino said as he closed his eyes. "Get you some decent clothes, take you back to Vegas with me, show you off."

A wave of relief passed over Cindy Caswell, but she did not allow it to spoil her concentration.

April 7,1990 "You really expect anyone to buy this boat anchor?" Henry Bowman grunted as he helped Allen Kane lift the 12.7mm Russian DSHK heavy machine Gun onto its armored mount. "At-what? Twelve thousand dollars?" Allen Kane shrugged.

"Never can tell. There's only seven of them, I think, on the registry, and this one's never been cut. But even if I knew no one would be interested, I'd bring it anyway," Allen said as the gun slipped into position. "Big display'll draw guys who've only got a couple Gs to spend."

"I guess you got a point," Henry admitted. Allen Kane, with seventeen eight-foot tables, was the largest exhibitor at the Indianapolis Gun Show. Kane's usual assistant had been unavailable, and Henry had driven to the show early to help his friend set up before the show opened, and help field questions from the thousands of showgoers. Allen had almost a hundred machine guns and other NFA weapons on display, including about two dozen belt-fed weapons. Henry's eye fell on a 20mm Solothurn S18-1000, and he thought of the one Walter had given him for his fourteenth birthday. Mine's in even better condition he thought proudly as he noticed the minor blue wear on the sharp edges of Allen's gun.

"Is that why you brought the Gatling?" Henry was nodding toward a beautiful full-size replica of an 1873 Gatling Gun on the correct oak field carriage. The entire assembly weighed about 500 pounds.

"Well, partly," Allen said, "but this is a big show, and there's a good chance that someone will take that home with him, since there's no Form 4 involved." Henry nodded. A crank-operated Gatling did not fall under the machine gun classification, as it did not Tire multiple shots with a single function of a trigger', which was the definition of full-auto fire.

"I usually sell one at about every other big show. I sell at least one at every big California show," Allen added. "Sometimes Mike can't build them fast enough for me." The Gatling guns were made by Thunder Valley Ordnance, a shop whose sole owner and master machinist was a muscular perfectionist named Mike Suchka, who had a penchant for 18-hour work days.

"You set up in California?" Henry asked, surprised. Although California state law had a provision for private ownership of machine guns, the state blanketly rejected all applications. Only Stembridge Gun Rentals, which served the Hollywood movie industry, and a handful of importers and police distributors like Armex International, met with state approval.

"I don't normally set up at gun shows in non-machine-gun states, but California's an exception." "What, you do business with Stembridge?"

"Yeah, usually a little bit, but that's pretty trivial. I do a fair amount of night vision gear, rangefinders, and stuff like that, but the crazy thing is the quantity of parts I sell to individuals."

"What?" Henry asked as he put down the night vision scope he had been examining and turned to face his friend.

"I know it sounds nuts, but those people out there will buy shit that won't move anywhere else in the country. It's the damnedest thing I've ever seen. Last batch of parts I got from Charley, his guys threw on a bunch of torch-cut .50 barrels by accident. Didn't charge me for them, but the damn things added a few hundred pounds to the weight. I called him up to bitch about having to pay the freight on a bunch of scrap I didn't want, he said throw 'em away and he'd knock a hundred bucks off my next order."

"Charley's like that," Henry said with a laugh. "I bought my first centerfire from him, a 98 Mauser when I was ten years old."

"You and about a million other kids in the early "sixties," Allen said with a smile. "Anyway, I still had the barrels in the truck when I hit the L.A. show, so I threw 'em on my table and stuck a price of twenty bucks each on 'em. They all moved the first day."

"That's crazy. Torch-cut barrels? They're useless."

"That's what I said. But it happens every show out there. They'll buy anything- wooden buttstocks for machine guns where every known example has been destroyed, magazines for Swiss subguns where no known example exists in this country, you name it." Allen Kane shook his head.

"Way I had it explained, California's got so many people in it, a lot of them were there before '68, and remember the way it used to be. Back when you could buy anything you wanted, take it out in the desert and shoot it, and nobody cared. Now they get hit with a new state ban on something every few months or so, and they'll buy anything.

"Also, with the new people, a lot of them have lots of money, and figure they'll get a state permit somehow, 'cause they think rich people can always figure out ways around the rules."

"On gun stuff, it's the other way around," Henry broke in. "In Missouri, black guy in an old Fairlane gets stopped and the cops find an old piece-of-shit .22 auto with the sear ground down so it'll run the clip out, they take the gun and tell him to get lost. Same thing happens to a millionaire in the high-rent district, it'll cost him fifty, sixty thousand bucks and maybe he'll avoid a felony conviction, maybe not. Happened to a Ralston Purina heir last year. Damn near lost everything he had over an original Maxim silencer his old man had bought for three bucks back in the 'twenties."

"Yeah, well, it takes rich people a while to learn that cop courtesy goes out the window on gun stuff. When they do, and if they live in California, they get another place in Nevada, buy and keep their squirt guns there, or maybe they sit tight and hope the laws will all get repealed, ha ha. Point is, I sell a lot of parts and stuff in California that are of no earthly use to anyone, but the folks out there buy 'em 'cause they still can." Allen Kane shook his head, marvelling at the concept of people eager to buy machine gun barrels that had been demilled with a cutting torch.

"Speaking of getting nailed," Allen said, "you guys in Missouri having trouble with feds at gun shows?" Henry scowled.

"Yeah, some that I hear about, but I haven't set up at a show for a couple years now. I sell subguns to police departments now and then, but it's so hard getting Form 4s signed in my area, it's not worth it for me to pay for the table space. What's been going on around here? Standard scam about dealing without a license? Conspiracy bullshit?"

"Those, yeah, but they got another one now. Remember how ATF ruled you couldn't have spare suppressor parts, like wipes, even if you had a suppressor registered to you, unless you we re a manufacturer?"

"I heard about that, but I thought someone made it up, it sounded so crazy," Henry answered. A suppressor 'wipe' is a rubber disc with a hole in it slightly smaller than the bullet diameter, installed just under the front end cap of a suppressor. The rubber stretches as the bullet passes through, then snaps back, trapping the sound a little more effectively than a metal baffle. Wipes have to be replaced often as the rubber quickly wears out, and accuracy is much worse than with baffle-only designs, because the bullet hits the rubber before leaving the suppressor. All of Henry's suppressors were wipeless designs, and even so, he still wore out baffles periodically with high-volume shooting.

"Believe it, it's true. A few guys in Indiana and Ohio didn't take the feds seriously. Thought that having spare rubber washers for their registered suppressor would be okay, 'cause they wear out so fast." "Oh, shit," Henry said. He could see what was coming.

"Oh shit is right. First guy got sentenced to three years in prison, and the others became ATF informants like right now. Dealer at the Columbus show last month caught one of these assholes trying to slip an autosear and some suppressor wipes into his parts box to set him up. That's why I started keeping everything besides the guns in these cases." Allen gestured to the large, flat, plexiglas-topped, compartmented cases that covered three of his tables. They were filled with bolts, springs, extractors, magazines, and other gun parts. The cases were hinged at the spectator side and latched at the side towards the exhibitor. The goods were clearly visible to the show patrons, but only someone standing behind the table could get at them.

"I'll watch out for that kind of crap," Henry promised. He looked at his watch. "Should open in about fifteen minutes. You want a Coke before the crowd hits?"

"Breakfast of Champions," Kane said. Henry headed for the concession stand.

"Mister Blair, I gotta say, I'm kind of nervous about this," the ATF agent said with an apologetic look. "Hey," he added, noticing that the senior man was parking in a loading zone. "Should we be parking here?" "What, you think I'm going to have to pay a parking ticket?" Blair laughed. This kid really is new he thought. "You don't want to have to walk to hell-and-gone, do you?" He gestured to the myriad pedestrians that were all headed towards the Indianapolis Convention Center. Many carried cased long guns, and one man had a shotgun under his arm without any case at all.

"I've told you before," Wilson Blair went on, speaking to his protege's fears, "you can't screw up gun show duty. It's not possible. And you'll actually be better at this than some of the guys who've been doing it for a while, 'cause there's no way anyone could recognize you on your first day undercover. Right?" The young man nodded. "You'll be fine," Blair told him. "Trust me." Wilson Blair shut off the ignition, then turned to the young agent. "You want me to run through everything again, before we go in?"

"Yes, please. That would help me a lot."

"Okay. Blending in's a snap. When we get in the door, immediately go to one corner of the hall and start there. Just walk down the aisle, looking at everything on all the tables. Ignore all the non-gun stuff, just like a gun nut would do. When you get to the end, go to the next row and walk down it in the opposite direction, and so on. That way you'll make a path that goes by every table, just like the customers do."

"I know that part, but what about what I'm supposed to do? Should I concentrate on the people who're set up, or the ones walking the aisles, or-"

"I'm getting to that," Blair said with a smile. "Bear with me."

"Sorry."

"Don't worry about it." This kid acts scared to death Blair thought with amazement. "Like I've told you before, there's no risk here. None of these people are going to do anything to you if they find out who you are. You're not DEA, for Christ's sake. These people don't think they're doing anything wrong. Remember what I told you?"

"Yeah," the young man said sheepishly. "Like writing parking tickets, only a lot more fun."

"Right. Okay, priorities," Blair said. "There's all kinds of things we can nail guys for, but it'll be easiest for you if you divide it in your mind into two categories: Number One, dealing firearms without a federal license, and Number Two, conspiracy to violate federal firearms laws." He saw the younger man nodding, and had an idea. "Why don't you tell me about how to catch someone for dealing without a license?" The younger man licked his lips.

"Uh, okay. As I walk through the aisles, I watch for anyone buying a gun from someone at a table. I pay attention to what it is and how much he pays for it, and I listen in to make sure he's not a dealer. If it's something that costs less than $400,1 trail him from a distance until he's well away from the man he bought it from. Then I come up to him, say That's a nice...whatever, I'll give you...blank for it', and quote a figure $200 higher than what he paid."

"Right. Then what?"

"Then, if he says no, I offer to go a little higher. If I make the deal, I pay him, then ask to see his license. If he doesn't have one, I arrest him, and call you over." The agent looked worried.

"What's the matter?" Blair asked.

"Well, suppose it turns out he is a dealer, and never mentioned it when he bought the gun? Then I've wasted a bunch of ATF's money."

"Five, six hundred bucks? Don't worry about it. One solid bust will make up for fifty that turn out to be dealers." Has this kid forgotten everything? Blair wondered when he saw the young agent's quizzical look.

"You're forgetting that when you arrest the guy, you seize all his cash, which with some of these gun nuts is a bundle. Then you seize whatever guns he has. Then we go out to the parking lot and seize his vehicle. You might pick up thirty, forty grand on one bust."

"Won't the case get thrown out? You know, entrapment?"

"Who cares? Only way that'll happen is if the guy hires some serious legal muscle and spends fifty or sixty thousand bucks. And frankly, no one with any sense takes a chance in court on gun stuff. Everything's a felony, and the public's sick of these gun guys. A judge or a jury might slap him with ten years as soon as turn him loose. You watch-nail some guy good today and see if he doesn't agree to hand over his cash, guns, and car in return for us not pressing charges." Wilson Blair smiled and went on. "Now tell me about how you get someone for conspiracy."

"Well, uh, that's mainly finding someone that's talking about how you can, you know, do something that isn't legal to do."

"Such as?" Blair prompted.

"Uh, like taking the thumbhole spotter stock off one of the recently-imported semi-autos, and putting an old pre-ban style buttstock on instead."

"Hey," Wilson Blair said, impressed, "you even sound like one of these gun nuts." The young agent blushed.

"I've, uh, been reading up," he explained.

"That was a good example you gave," Blair told him. "What are some other felonies these people might conspire to do?"

"Well, talking about how to sneak in one of the guns they don't allow you to import any more, uh...talking about, you know, uh, how to put a bayonet on one of the military rifles that came in after the Bush ban, uh, talking about how to make brass bullets for handgun ammo, uh..." The agent finally shrugged to indicate he had run out of ideas.

"You're forgetting the best one of all," Blair told him. Actually the second-best Blair thought, but we won't get into the suppressor-parts tactic until you're farther along. "That's conspiring to convert Title 1 firearms into machine guns."

"Right!" the young man said immediately. "I blanked on that one."

"That's the big kahuna," Blair said. "You'll see several Class 3 dealers set up at this show, and the smallest one will have fifty thousand bucks worth of guns on his table. You get one of those jerks explaining to someone how to convert a gun to full auto, we can put him out of business for keeps." Blair stared at the younger agent. "You ready?"

"Yessir," the young man said as he zipped up his blue nylon windbreaker. Blair nodded and opened the car door.

"Then let's go do some good."

"Man, you got a beautiful set-up here. I've never seen a machine gun display before."

"Thanks," Henry said, "but I'm just helping out at these tables. My friend's off looking around the show. But I'm a Class 3 dealer too, and I know most of these guns pretty well, so I can probably answer any questions you have. Other than swap offers, and stuff like that," he added. The man Henry was talking to had greying hair and looked to be about fifty. He was very well dressed. That platinum Rolex probably set him back as much as a new Corvette Henry thought absentmindedly.

"I don't mean to be rude, but some of these guns seem ridiculously expensive. Like that STEN gun there for a thousand dollars-didn't those cost about six dollars to make during World War II?"

"They actually cost less than that," Henry agreed, nodding. "And you're not being rude at all. The problem is that the supply is fixed. And small," he added. Henry noticed that a few other people had gathered around, listening to what he said to the man. "If you'd like, I'll explain."

"I'd like to know, even if he doesn't," one of the others said.

"Okay," Henry said, swallowing. "The STEN gun was a military weapon made in a foreign country. The Gun Control Act of 1968 banned importation of all foreign-made machine guns. Some STENs, like that one, had already been brought in before that. In duffel bags of GIs returning home in '45, mostly. However, there was a two hundred dollar tax on machine guns, and no one paid that kind of money back then just to have a piece of paper for a junky old STEN gun.

"Then, in '68, our government gave anyone with non-taxed machine guns a one-month grace period where they could register them for free. A few people heard about this amnesty before it was over and actually did that. The problem was, anyone who didn't register his guns was out of luck forever; After '68, you couldn't do it even if you were willing to pay the two hundred. And remember, additional imports were banned. So the only original STEN guns you can buy-like this one-are ones that were brought back by GIs and amnesty-registered. There are probably less than a thousand of them on the registry, and there can't be any more, even though the guns are available overseas for a nickel a pound." He held the weapon out for the man to examine.

"Now, after 1968, existing machine guns could not be registered or imported, but domestic manufacturers, here in the U.S., were still allowed to make and register weapons. A STEN gun receiver is a rather simple thing to make, so you will see many STENs like this one," Henry explained, as he lifted a second example off the table, "and they sell for about half of an what an original goes for. The receiver is recent U.S. manufacture, the rest of the parts are military surplus." Henry handed the man the second STEN so he could compare the two.

"The next thing you'll probably tell me is that five hundred is still awfully steep for the new-receiver gun, and that it couldn't cost more than fifty bucks to make. The reason it's five hundred is that on May 19, 1986, all U.S. manufacture of machine guns for nongovernment use was banned. So the supply of non-original STENs on the market is now fixed as well. As an Economics major would say, this is a textbook example of the government introducing a huge distortion into the free market."